


Nesting Hearts

by jessequicksters



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Astronomer Tony, Celestial Tony, Conservation, Falling In Love, Fluff, M/M, Magical Realism, Marine Biologist Steve, Romance, Summer, Turtles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 16:35:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17832185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessequicksters/pseuds/jessequicksters
Summary: Steve is a marine biologist works on sea turtle conservation every summer. Tony is an ex-celestial astronomer who wanders the waters, always looking up at the stars but never stopping to appreciate the miraculous lives of the critters swimming beneath him.So Steve shows Tony a baby turtle one day; they fall in love.





	Nesting Hearts

**Author's Note:**

> the stevetony turtle fic. inspired by my love of sea turtles and marine conservation.

It’s the summer, and the beach that Steve’s been working on has been buzzing with activity all week. Hatchlings are coming out faster than Steve had expected—must be something in the moon—but in any case, it’s incredibly exciting. In all his years as a marine biologist surveying the same beach, he’s never seen this many nests in his life. It’s a fantastic sign for the survival of the species. Times are a-changin', as someone once said, and it seems that they’re changing for the better.

It’s hard work, day and night, and for six whole months every year Steve’s body kicks into overdrive. The nesting season requires him to do morning surveys before dawn, to look for turtle tracks in the sand and mark the nests for egg-counting and put up protective barriers to keep them safe from wild dogs. The night surveys are where the magic happens, though. Long walks on the beach that last ‘till sunrise, delirious on the lack of sleep, drunk on the smell of sea salt, the feeling of fresh waves on their feet and a glorious blanket of stars rolled out over their heads like a moving tapestry. They watch as mother turtles lay their eggs, measuring their dimensions and tagging them for their records.

As the lead biologist of the team, Steve has the luxury of being able to delegate shifts and tasks, but he’s just not that type of leader when it comes down to it. He’d much rather be in the thick of the action, savoring the sight of these beautiful little creatures until every last drop of energy runs out.

He’s sprawled out on the beach, after a particularly busy night of nesting activity—they had nearly twenty nests in one night and everyone was running wild trying to get everything on time. His volunteers, Bucky and Natasha, are passed out in the car. His co-leader and trainer, Sharon, is packing up the last of their supplies while sharing the news with Sam, who also reported a busy night in another sector of the beach.

Steve sits there waiting for daybreak and for more turtles to hatch, as the others slowly head back to camp. He watches as a mother turtle swims back into the waters, thinks about how brave she is to travel miles and miles through the oceans, all alone and away from home. He thinks about home and where that is for him. He isn’t sure, really, and the thought gets lost as the turtle disappears under the waves.

In the darkness, Steve notices a glint of light in the waters. A boat. . .? It wouldn’t be unusual for fishermen to be out in these waters at this time, but by the size of it it looks like something else and he thinks he knows exactly who it is.

Steve’s never actually approached him before, in all the summers he’s been here, the astronomer who wanders the waters. He’s become like some kind of a myth—the man who sails the seas to feel closer to the stars. Steve has always hoped that he would come across him and a few summers back he thinks he actually did, but there was a medical emergency with one of the volunteers who had to be rushed back to camp and by the time Steve returned to the beach, the man was gone.

He isn’t going to miss the opportunity again.

“Hey!” Steve says, running up to the coastline and waving at him.

The man stands still on his boat, but Steve sees his figure turning towards him.

“Do you ever come to shore?” Steve asks, feeling silly that he can’t think of anything better to say.

There’s a pause, and for a second Steve considers that the man might not have heard him. He thinks about whether it would be a good idea to jump into the waters and swim all the way there.

“Only if you’ve got something good to offer me in return,” the man finally replies, in a confident, almost playful voice.

Steve laughs, with his hands on his hips as he looks around. There’s nothing on this beach but sea turtle nests for miles out and he has every single one of them marked and memorized in his mind. 

He has one thing to offer, though—the only thing, really.

“Ever seen baby turtles?”

The man pulls up on the shore. He hops off his boat and Steve gets a peek of all of his stargazing equipment on it. For a one-man boat, it packs an impressive amount of stuff on the deck. He’s heard rumors that the man built everything himself while stranded on an island during a scientific expedition. His team had stolen his tech and abandoned him to die, so he built an entire boat from the scraps of old wreckages and set sailing by himself ever since.

As Steve actually gets a better look at him, up close, with daybreak slowly rising, the stars start raining down on them.

“You okay? I thought you were gonna show me some little critters,” the man says, smiling through his goatee. His hair is tousled in waves from the sea salt and wind, big eyes radiating warmth at him.

Okay, so the stars aren’t actually falling. Steve just hasn’t slept in about two days and it just feels like they are because—well, because a gorgeous and mysterious angel has just emerged from the foggy waters and Steve doesn’t really know how to act or what to do next.

He promised to show him baby turtles. Right. As one of the top marine biologists in the world, Steve can do. . . that.

“What should I call you?” Steve asks.

“Rocket Man?”

“Oh. That’s—“

“Just kidding, Tony’s fine.” He flashes a grin at Steve and starts walking up the beach, towards one of the nests marked with a signpost stuck in the sand and wooden grids over it. He bends over, examining it as his hands start fiddling with the grids.

“That one’s not due for another month or so, and the grids are for the dogs.”

“Dogs?”

“Yeah, they come up and try to dig up the eggs sometimes. Sometimes it’s poachers, too, or just people vandalizing the nests—but the coastguards keep them away for the most part.”

“Can’t trust anyone these days, can you?” Tony clicks his tongue and stands back up.

Steve shrugs. “We all try to do our part. Oh! Look, that nest is hatching.”

He runs over to one of the nests closer to the shore and Tony follows. He kneels over, removing the grids and watching as the sand starts to move. Tony watches curiously, kneeling over and intensely watching the sand. His hands are folded over his lap, like he’s scared of touching anything, and Steve feels himself blush when he realizes that he’s been staring for too long.

“So how long does this take?”

“A while,” Steve admits. “If you’re happy to get comfortable, I can promise you, the payoff is worth it.”

Tony looks at his boat for a second, then back at Steve. He smiles from the corner of his lip and nods. Steve shuffles over closer towards him and explains the type of work they do, the species of Olive Ridley turtles they’re working on conserving and the team who’s working with him all summer.

Tony listens, then asks him where he hangs around in the off-season.

 

-

 

After years sailing the seven seas, falling in love with constellations, planets and stars from every corner of the world, Tony can safely say that the greatest breakthrough he made was the one he made one summer in Costa Rica, when a certain marine biologist taught him about sea turtles and showed him a nest of them hatching for the first time.

Mother Nature was truly beautiful. Her sister, Fate, was endlessly kind and generous. Tony had hated Fate at first—for cursing him, a star, to be trapped in the mortal body of a man. He felt doomed spending the rest of his days serving a group of people who were always trying to hurt or betray each other. The worst part was that for a moment, Tony believed that he was one of them. Human.

Steve was the first person who made him feel like a celestial again. Tony always had his eyes up to the stars, longing to be back home with the great gods, but Steve had shown him the beauty of a tiny creature—a species, in which, only one in a thousand babies would reach adulthood. The resilience, the bravery, the loneliness of such creatures. . . it made him cry that first night when Steve was telling him about them.

_“Hey, hey. It’s okay, Tony—I know, it makes me sad too.”_

_“Why do you bother doing all this work, then? All these nests, you know most of them will end up dead.”_

_“I know. But the ones that do make it, they’ll come back to this beach someday and nest. Did you know that female turtles will come back to nest on the very same beach they came from? They make their way back home.”_

_“Oh my god—that’s. Beautiful and stupid at the same time. Turtles live a more poetic life than I do.”_

_“What do you mean?”_

_“It means I can never go home, Steve. I know my way back—but Fate will never let me return to my own shorelines. She’s got the currents working against me for as long as I live.”_

It turns out, Fate had been trying to steer him to another different coastline entirely. He spends the rest of his years with Steve on the beach, raising generations of sea turtles as they grow old together. He learns to cherish the feeling, of growing old. Steve grows a gorgeous grey beard on him over the years that Tony loves to kiss and feel brushing against every inch of his body, basking in loving praise and adoration. His eyes are still as blue as the day they met. He holds onto Tony tight every night, like the currents could take him away any minute and kisses him like he’s drinking liquid from the stars.

Steve goes sailing with Tony on his boat in the off-season and they stay at their own beach house the other half of the year. Tony dives with Steve, exploring worlds underwater and Steve learns about the stars with Tony. They spend most of their time exploring new places and charting new maps for themselves because they realize that they’ve got their own stories to tell. He learns to treasure life, for all its mortal fragility.

Tony still watches the stars, though not with the same amount of sadness as before. He’s made it home, after all these years, even if home is no longer a place in the celestial kingdom. Home is Earth. Home is in Steve’s arms, with eyes looking over the horizon at a sun that sets, knowing that all things will come to an end. Home is a single tiny miracle in the face of impossible adversity that makes it all worth saving in the end.

 


End file.
